Sure, We’ll Stop Charging People To Park On Sundays — We Just Won’t Change The Signs!

After the City Council reversed the mayor’s short-lived Sunday parking meter scheme, the city has been slow to change parking signs, leading some to wonder if it is intentional:

Drivers no longer need to feed parking meters on Sunday but wouldn’t know it by looking at the city’s street signs.
Since the ban on Sunday parking meters became official last November, the Department of Transportation has corrected only 5,137 of its 15,062 Sunday parking signs — a mere one-third over four months.

The slow pace has motorists crying foul.

“The reason they’re not moving quickly is because they want the revenue,” said Glen Bolofsky, president of ticket-fighting Web site parkingticket.com. “They have false signs up encouraging people to insert money into a meter that legally is not even supposed to accept the money.

“The city is just reaping a windfall from unsuspecting people,” he said.

The most backlogged borough is Brooklyn, where only 57 of 3,520 signs have been corrected. Manhattan is next, with only 1,675 of 4,711 signs replaced, and Queens third with fewer than half of its 5,590 signs changed.

“The city was fast to put them up when they were going to make revenue,” said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6, which covers Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Park Slope.

“It was as if a white tornado blew through the district,” he said of the 2002 policy change that required Sunday parking fees.

The city estimated the Sunday fees generated $7 million annually.

DOT could not estimate how much money it is still collecting on Sundays since the November ban.